Artificial electromagnetic materials, normally known as metamaterials, are new artificial synthetic materials, are composed of at least a substrate made of non-metal materials and a number of artificial microstructures attached onto the surface of the substrate or embedded into the substrate. The substrate can be virtually divided into multiple substrate units arranged in an array. Artificial microstructures are attached to each substrate unit to form a metamaterial unit. Whole of the metamaterial is composed of many such metamaterial units, as crystal is composed of many lattices. The artificial microstructure in each of metamaterial unit can be the same or not identical. The artificial microstructure is composed of metal wires and is in a certain geometric pattern, which is plane structure or three-dimensional structure, such as a ring shape or an “I” shape.
Because of the existing of artificial microstructure, each of metamaterial units has electromagnetic characteristic which is different from the substrate. Therefore the metamaterial composed of all of the metamaterial units has special response characteristics to the electric field and magnetic field.
By designing different particular structures and shapes of the artificial microstructures, response characteristics of the whole metamaterial can be changed.
The dielectric constant of common materials changing with frequency usually has a resonant peak. As shown in FIG. 1, the dielectric constant when in low loss is usually greater than 10. In some applications, especially in large scale integrated circuits, materials with a low dielectric constant are necessary. Common materials are generally not satisfied.